ASSESSMENT OF QUALITY MANAGEMENT PRACTICES IN CADILA PHARMACEUTICALS (Ethiopia) MANUFACTURING PLC.

Abstract

This study has been conducted on the assessment of practices in quality management at Cadila Pharmaceuticals (Ethiopia) Manufacturing PLC. A descriptive research approach was employed using a questionnaire and interview to get primary data from employees of CPEL and secondary data from self-observation. Key principles of quality management practices such as customer focus, leadership or management commitment, engagement of employees, continuous improvement in the company, evidence-based decision-making, and relationship management were used as independent variables accompanied by different measurement instruments under each variable to measure organizational quality management. The data were collected with a 100% response rate to the distributed principle of QMS questionnaires and analysed using descriptive statistics focusing on the mean, standard deviation, and percentages, which are calculated using the statistical package for the social sciences (SPSS) version 23. The validity of the instrument was checked, and the internal consistency of the instrument was measured using Cronbach’s alpha, and the result was greater than 0.7, which signifies that the reliability of the data was very good. The results of this study show that the majority of the employees agree that Cadila Pharmaceuticals (Ethiopia) is practicing all these QMS principles. The research work has identified lack of employee commitment, difficulty in performing internal auditing, lack of financial resources or currency, lack of sufficient or consistent training about QMS implementation, organizational structure limitations, and documentation problems as challenges to the implementation of a quality management system in the Organization. The benefits of the CPEL from the implementation of QMS practices are also listed in this study, such as, improvement in productivity, improvement in efficiency, reduction in cost and waste, competitive advantage, increase in sales and market share, good customer relations, and increased customer satisfaction. This study finally recommended that all potential problems identified in the implementation practice of QMS be given due attention and appropriate preventive and corrective actions planned ahead during the planning and development stages of the system.